Friday, January 24, 2014

Roscoe's Vacation

It is looking like Roscoe is going to take a vacation to San Francisco. Unfortunately, he'll arrive in an ambulance and the hospital room he'll be in will look pretty similar to the NICU rooms he's lived in for the duration of his life so far in Roseville. The reason for this visit to UC San Francisco is Roscoe's pulmonary hypertension.

Roscoe has struggled with pulmonary hypertension since last November. Having pulmonary hypertension means that there is high blood pressure in the blood vessels between his heart and lungs. This high pressure makes Roscoe work harder to get oxygen into his blood and then out to the rest of his body where it is needed.

Since he's working harder to get a normal amount of oxygen to his body, he has increased oxygen requirements and might even be burning additional calories which are needed for growth.

What's new in the "pulmonary hypertension" discussion was something we found out last night when a pulmonary specialist was giving Roscoe an echocardiogram (an ultrasound on his lungs and heart). I snapped the picture below with one hand while I held Roscoe's pacifier in his mouth with my other hand:

The specialist discovered that one set of blood vessels had turbulence, caused by backpressure. This indicates that the size of the vessel on the input side doesn't match the size on the output side. The echocardiogram from last month (and every month prior) didn't show this problem, so this is something new that's developed in the past month. It may be that the vessel stayed the same size while the rest of his body grew, or it may be that one end is constricted. Either way, right now his case is "mild to medium" but if left untreated it would lead to bigger problems.

The experts in the area who deal with these kinds of issues are at UC San Francisco, so that's where they'll send Roscoe when a spot in the schedule opens up. It sounds like this will happen in the next few days, but we haven't heard anything specific yet. Stay tuned for more details on this rollercoaster of a childbirth!